Too Long A Sacrifice
by the-aleator
Summary: Sometimes, Lucien Blake thought he had never left that pit in the Ban Pong POW camp; other times, he looked at Jean and knew better.
1. Too Long A Sacrifice

Title: Too Long A Sacrifice

Characters: Lucien Blake, Jean Beazley, Charlie Davis, Matthew Lawson

Rating: T

Wordcount: 2375  
Warnings/Spoilers: S4 spoilers, and DBM speculation (particularly house/room layout).  
Summary: _Sometimes, Lucien Blake thought he had never left that pit in the Ban Pong POW camp; other times, he looked at Jean and knew better._

A/N: CHALLENGE: by 4.8, Jean clearly knows that Lucien is going to be "nervous" locked up in a police cell, and gives him the chalk so he can distract himself by solving the case. Nobody, on the other hand, seems to actually know that Lucien has traumatically induced claustrophobia in 1.8. Everybody does, however, suspect something is seriously wrong. So, how does this understanding come about between Jean and Lucien? Why? Let your imaginations go and explore why this might be the case.

This is my answer to that question. This chapter takes place sometime during S2, I think. There should be two or three more chapters. I'm new to the DBM and writing about Australia, so please be kind. (This remains unbeta-ed and barely edited. I welcome any and all feedback, so please review, friends. To borrow: we may be small, but we are fierce. )

* * *

 _Too long a sacrifice_

 _Can make a stone of the heart._

 _O when may it suffice?_

 _…W.B. Yeat, "Easter, 1916"_

Jean Beazley has never seen anyone have to force a drink down Lucien Blake's throat before. But there is Superintendent Matthew Lawson standing in front of him on the driveway, forcing him to swallow what looks like half a bottle of bottom shelf whiskey. She doesn't know why Lawson is here at the Blake house at half past midnight, but she knew it couldn't be anything good.

Dr. Blake hasn't been home all day after he went haring off that morning in search of some detail or other, and if Jean were pressed, she would have had to admit that she had fallen asleep knitting on the couch, waiting for him to come back. The night wind is cold against the fabric of her blouse, and she rubbed her arms, once, twice, trying to understand what is happening.

The rain had finally let up, almost an hour ago, but most of the Superintendent's uniform gleams wetly black under the pale moonlight. He moved to Blake's side, and Jean let out a breath she isn't aware she's holding.

Lucien is wrapped up in one of those gray, woolen police blankets, what she can see of his face looks chalky, and his pants and shoes are filthy with mud and soggy with water. Lawson said something to him, after he handed the empty bottle to Constable Davis.

"Sorry to bring him back so late, Mrs. Beazley." Lawson apologized, but there isn't a hint of apology in it. Jean nodded, knowing that something is terribly wrong. Why hasn't Lucien said anything? Normally he can't keep his mouth shut.

"We, uh, ran into a bit of trouble with Mr. Hopkins." Davis added, unhelpfully. Hopkins, Jean thought, a farmer on the far edges of town. He'd had some argument with his wife a while back she knew, but nothing else. "The doc was in that root cellar for a while—!"

Lucien groaned, pushed off Lawson's arm, and almost fell over onto the drive, all in the space of a few seconds.

"Shut up, Constable." Lawson growled, grabbing Lucien around the waist and hauling him up again. The blanket had fallen quite far down on his shoulders, and Jean can see that he's soaked through, sans jacket, and covered in mud. Lawson pulled Lucien after him, and with a shambling gait, they reach the front door.

"Blake." He muttered, near Blake's ear. "Come on, man!" He barked, propelling him through the door. Jean follows after them, concerned.

"Would tea help?" She asked, as tentatively as Jean Beazley does anything.

"'lo Jean." Blake slurred, and reached one hand for her. Her quiet gasp seemed as loud as a shout in the hallway, for Lucien's hands are shaking like leaves. It's the first time he's spoken since they came back, and his usually melodic voice sounded raspy and hoarse.

"Tea, yes." Lawson agreed, and then commanded, "Davis, get on it." Lucien has decided the best idea right now is to rest his head on Lawson's shoulder. It would look funny, Jean knew, Dr. Blake practically leaning into Superintendent Lawson like an eager puppy, if it weren't so wrong.

"What happened?" Jean said quietly, as she opened the door to Lucien's bedroom. In the almost two years she's known Lucien Blake, she's seen him in all states, including drunk out of his mind more than once, but she's never seen him like this. He's not moving at all, not just in his usual vibrant and vital way, and that's all wrong.

"Sit down, Blake." Lawson said, wearily, taking Blake's upper arms and sitting him on the edge of the bed. Jean shut the door behind them for privacy, as Lawson knelt, to take off Blake's filthy shoes, and Jean almost doesn't see what happens next. Without a word, Lucien has thrown off the blanket, and thrown himself at Lawson.

Lawson's cry of "Blake" is cut off by Lucien's hands on his throat. The world stands stock still for a moment, for Jean saw nothing of the kindly, gentle country physician in Lucian Blake at this moment, his eyes, normally so blue and warm, are cold and shuttered, his jaw set tight. It would almost be like two schoolboys scuffling on the ground, except there are no good-natured complaints or faux attempts at wrestling.

And all the muscles in Lucien's considerably powerful frame are straining against Lawson, almost as though he is trying to kill him. Lawson looks like he is trying to say something, but his face is turning red. Jean doesn't know what to do, but that she has to do something.

"Lucien." She called, softly. It isn't her right to command Dr. Blake to do anything, but he is, she knows, particularly courteous to women. A plea from her might succeed where Lawson's force will fail. Blake stopped for a minute. "Lucien." She said again, and he turned, to look at her, leaving off Lawson entirely.

"Jean?" He said, uncertainly, searching her as if seeing her for the first time. And then, he sat back on his heels, still looking at her, head cocked. His hands are still shaking, and he has pressed them to his chest, almost as if he is trying to make himself as small as possible.

"Get off, Blake." Lawson sid, from where he is lying underneath Blake on the floor. One of his hands has come up to rub at his neck, but otherwise, he isn't moving. He knew something, Jean decided intuitively, but Lucien isn't listening to him.

"Jean," Dr. Blake said again, and he sounded almost like a little boy, lost and more than a little confused. "Why is it dark?"

"The door is shut." Jean almost forgets to leave off the 'sweetheart,' at the end, but even looking at the tall and muscular form of Lucien Blake, all she can see is the blankness of those blue eyes at this moment. It's almost like looking at one of her young sons, utterly bewildered at why it's decided to rain again, or why the sky is blue.

"Why?" He said, quietly, and Jean doesn't know what to say, but goes with her instinct.

"We can open the door, if you'd like." She offered carefully, moving to the doorknob. He nodded, slowly, once.

"Please." He said, and sounded much more like himself. All this time, not more than a minute or two, Lawson has lain silent and still on the floor. In fact, except for their heavy breathing, and the few words they've said, the house is silent. She opened the door, and switched on the light.

"Why don't we get off the Superintendent?" Jean said agreeably, as if she were talking to a terrified small child. She extended her hand, and Blake took it, getting up. He swayed, a little, on his feet, and then Jean said, "Let's take off these wet things, yes?" A little nod, but at least he's looking at her, now, instead of through her. She undid the buttons on his shirtsleeves, his eyes on her hands the whole while.

Lawson got up slowly, and looked at Jean.

"Thank you, Mrs. Beazley. I'll take over from here." He said, and Jean accepted gracefully.

"Of course." She said. "I'll just go help Constable Davis with the tea, shall I?"

By the time she came back with tea, sweet and well-creamed, and in sturdy mugs, the Superintendent has managed to get Dr. Blake into dry sleeping things and into his bed. He looked half asleep already, and he has, she suddenly noticed, a large purple bruise forming on the side of his face.

"Thank you, Mrs. Beazley." Lawson said, taking the mug of tea gratefully. "I wouldn't mind something stronger, but it's probably not the time."

"Can I get you something else to wear, Superintendent," Jean said, gathering Blake's wet things into the basket on her other arm. "Dry, at least?"

"No, thank you. I won't stay long." He drink half the tea in one go, and then sighed. "This case is a bloody shambles."

"I'm sorry about just now," Jean said, "with Dr. Blake." He just shook off her apology, but his eyes turn back to Blake in his bed, and he looked grim, she realized. She put down the last mug of tea she had brought, for Lucien, and took up the basket in her arm. She doesn't shut the door behind them.

"What happened?" She asked again. Davis is hanging around the edges of the entry hallway, looking unsettled but unable to hide it and unable to do anything about it.

"Hopkins spooked when Blake showed up asking questions. He took off running, but not before he cocked the doctor in the face, and left him locked in the root cellar." Lawson said succinctly, and Jean can hear a whole story behind that sentence. "Davis found him, just in time too, half an hour more and the floodwater wound have completely filled the cellar."

"Thank you, Constable Davis." Jean managed, around a suddenly choked throat. Hours in a locked root cellar, in the dark, with the floodwater slowly rising? No wonder the doctor seems worse than unsettled. Davis doesn't say anything, but just looks more uncomfortable. Lawson is talking again, but Jean felt as though she is listening from down a long tunnel.

"I'll call back around tomorrow. See how he's doing." Lawson said, with a nod of his head towards Lucien's bedroom. He puts his mug on the side table. "Thank you for the tea." He said, and he's gone out the front door.

"Mrs. Beazley." Davis said, all earnestness and unease. "The doc, he wasn't himself, you know. When I got him out."

"Yes, Charlie. I understand."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight." The door shut behind him with finality, and Jean let out a long, slow breath. The clock in the hallway struck one. Time for bed, she thought. The tea things and laundry can wait until tomorrow.

* * *

It's a funny thing that Dr. Blake's yelling doesn't wake her, but that the front door opening and slamming on its hinges does. She's out of bed and in her dressing gown before she even thinks about who would be opening the front door.

She met Mattie at the stairs.

"Jean?" Mattie said. "What was that?"

"Nothing." Jean said, and seeing the patent disbelief on Mattie's face, patted her forearm gently. "I'll take care of it." Implicit in her tone, she hoped, is that Mattie shouldn't see this.

Something of this must get across, for all Mattie says is "oh," and then, even quieter, "goodnight, Jean."

Jean is down the stairs and out the door the minute Mattie's back is turned to her.

She is not surprised to see Dr. Blake standing out in the front garden, hair standing on end, breath coming in quick and fluttery pulls. He can't settle his mouth into closing, seeming not to notice that he's opening and shutting his teeth quickly every few seconds. He doesn't seem to notice her, and he always notices her.

"Dr. Blake," she said to his rigid back. "Lucien." She said again, and he let out a long, shuddering sigh. They stand there in a fragile silence, and Jean barely noticed the cold, seeing how the doctor's hands are still shaking. Jean thought she might say something, but cannot think of anything to say. She knew how to deal with Dr. Blake in his wild and frantic moods, but this is something else, something brittle and sore.

She had told him, once, furiously, that other people had suffered through the war. And that was true. But she knows—knows in her bones that way she knows that Jack will always be trouble and Christopher the dependable one, that some fundamental part of Lucien Blake has been changed by terrible suffering. Other people might say he had been broken beyond repair, but if that is the case, Jean thought, why would he be so kind, kind beyond sense?

"It brought it all back, that cellar." He offered finally, pointedly not looking at her, trapping his shaking hands under his arms. "Stealing that pineapple." Jean doesn't understand, but perhaps she doesn't need to understand, just to listen, to hear the truth of the suffering he's undergone. He fell silent, working his jaw.

"Pineapple, Lucien?" He swung his head, just a little almost to see her, but settles for facing the stars. Breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. One, twice, three times.

"We were starving, you know. And I never thought they'd miss a single can of pineapple. But they did." He laughed, hollowly, and Jean thought perhaps he might be crying. The studied lack of emotion in his voice is a telltale sign, she knew, that he's feeling too much to express at this moment if ever.

"Forty days in a pit in the ground." Suddenly, he's standing close to her, close enough she can feel the heat rising off of him, like a horse too mettlesome to run. "Too small to stand, too narrow to lie down."

She felt his hand, too hot, resting on her shoulder. He's running a fever already.

"I can't…" He half-voiced, and breaks off. Is that why his throat is so hoarse, she wonders, from yelling out in fear at a hellish memory come true again. "Small spaces bother me." He finished, perhaps a little lamely, his willingness to expose her to his pain already seeping away with the remnants of his nightmare.

"Back to bed, Dr. Blake." Jean replied firmly, seeing the way exhaustion and grief is pulling at his eyes. Doubtless he'll be sick in the morning, but illness she can deal with—this fragility she can't. Not yet.

The clock in the hall sounds half past three by the time she's settled him back in his bed. And, as she pulled the quilts over him, he's already starting to get drowsy. Jean cannot help herself, as he shuts his eyes; she smooths down his hair gently over his brow. She took her hand away haltingly, and stood there for a moment, sorry for him.

"Stay." He said, more unguarded in that word than she has ever heard. "Please."

And so, in the chair by his side, she does.


	2. On Limbs That Had Run Wild

Title: Too Long A Sacrifice

Characters: Lucien Blake, Jean Beazley, Mattie O'Brien, OC

Rating: T

Wordcount: 2362 (4583)  
Warnings/Spoilers: S4 spoilers, and DBM speculation (particularly house/room layout).  
Summary: _Sometimes, Lucien Blake thought he had never left that pit in the Ban Pong POW camp; other times, he looked at Jean and knew better._

A/N: So, there was a lot of research on the Burma Railway and POW Camps that has gone into this fic so far, and I must say, it chills me to think that there were POWs (like our fictional Lucien) who _did_ live for 3 or 4 years, malnourished, forced to slave labor, and with terrible deprivations. It isn't a subject to research without a clear head, and trying to write about it doesn't do justice to it. Which is why, I suspect, DBM has let that aspect of the story re-emerge in the Mei Lin question.

To the men who did survive the Railway of Death, _requiescat in pace_.

(This remains unbeta-ed and even less barely edited than the first chapter. I welcome any and all feedback, so please review, friends. To borrow: we may be small, but we are fierce. )

* * *

On Limbs That Had Run Wild

 _That is Heaven's part, our part_

 _To murmur name upon name,_

 _As a mother names her child_

 _When sleep at last has come_

 _On limbs that had run wild._

 _…W.B. Yeat, "Easter, 1916"_

She's gone by the time he wakes up, of course. In fact, she's dressed, made breakfast, cleaned the dishes and assembled another mug of tea, steeped thickly with honey and lemon by the time Dr. Blake even started waking up.

"Jean." He coughed more than said. "You left." The tone isn't quite accusatory, but it is sad.

"Someone had to make breakfast." She said archly, and the sharpness of her tone nicely covered the tumult of her feelings.

"Ah. Thank you." He replied to her hand holding the mug out to him. She doesn't normally serve him as much as tea in bed, but for today she'll make an exception.

He came in for lunch, fully armored in a three-piece suit once more. He's been occupied at least part of the morning with seeing patients, Jean knew, and doubtless he'll be hungry.

He hasn't even sat down before he's standing up again, with the muttered excuse,

"Thank you, Jean, I don't think I'm quite hungry." He said, and left more quickly then he'd come.

"Is he working on a case?" Mattie wanted to know. Jean said nothing, just sipping her soup, feeling vaguely upset. She'd done a vegetable, beef and rice soup up especially for the cold he's bound to begin nursing sooner or later. He'd barely set eyes on it, then he up and left.

He rattled around in his surgery for a while, and Jean dearly hoped that he isn't drinking, not this early in the day. She cleared the table, sent Mattie off on her afternoon rounds with a couple of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, and then sets about luring out one wild doctor.

It seems the closest he can get to an oubliette is sitting under his desk, knees pulled into his chest and jaw tensed under his beard.

"Is this an experiment, then?"

"No." He said instantly, sounding off-kilter. Then, softer, "yes."

"Is it working?"

"No." He admitted, holding out his wrist and tapping. "My heart rate's gone up by thirty already." He sounded disgusted with himself, but Jean softened, and sighed. She'll have to provide some common sense here. "I can't even sit under my own desk!"

Jean eyed him sideways, for a man of his size, he's practically crammed himself under the desk. A boy might have trouble getting under the desk, and her mind paused on the image of Lucien sneaking under Dr. Blake's desk with a head of blonde curls and a handful of shortbread biscuits, maybe even to share. She shook off the image as quickly as it came; best not to go there.

"And why would you?" Jean said sharply. "Anyway, that isn't the point, is it?" She continued astutely. "Not being able to sit under your desk doesn't normally bother you." Lucien looked sullen but didn't say anything. "What would you do, Doctor, for one of your patients with…with claustrophobia?"

There. She had said it. Now they could deal with the medical term and its implications out in the open.

"Have you been reading my books again, Jean?" Dr. Blake said, sounding close to delighted. Jean doesn't deign to answer; a woman must have her secrets. But she can't let him get on with his guesses either, something he's reasonably good at, so she redirects.

"Your father read them." It's hard to read the expression on his face at the non sequitur, but at least he looked intrigued. "And he had a patient named—?" She let the sentence drag off while she rested her dusting rag on the backs of his consulting chairs. "Stevie Simpson." She sounded finally, and even with a hint of triumph. She can feel his eyes on her back as she turned toward the corner. "Poor boy." She said, and sighed a little, because the story was foolish and sad. "He and his mates were playing hide-and-seek in the cemetery after school one day."

"The cemetery?"

"Yes, well, boys will be young and foolish." Jean allowed, and continued, "And they shut him in one of the crypts for a lark. Just a bit of a joke, they thought. Turned out Stevie didn't think that way. They found him, of course, after one of the boy fessed up and told his mum."

"Your father was very kind to him." She nodded in his direction. Her tone was not meant to be reproving, but she could see where the memory of his father might help Lucien even now, if he wasn't as stubborn as a mule. "Talked him through it, day after day." Comforted him, she wanted to say, made him feel safe. "His father had died in the war, of course, and your father took a bit of an interest in him." Lucien's face fell a little at that. She wanted to soothe him, to tell him that of course his father had loved him, been interested in him, talked about him for years, but she knew that won't help, not here.

"It took some time, but the claustrophobia did get better for Stevie. I doubt he'll ever be a miner but he doesn't struggle that way unless he's already shaken. Yes," she says, straightening the few loose sheets of paper on Blake's desk. "And now, out you get, Dr. Blake."

"Jean?" He said, almost bewildered. Jean's eyebrow went up; it was worth pulling the rug out from underneath him a time or two.

"You've been under there almost twenty minutes. Quite enough for one day, I'd say." She said, putting down a hand.

"Quite right." He managed, stifling a chuckle. "Thank you, Jean."

"You're welcome, Lucien. Now come and have some tea."

He wound up with a hacking cough, of course, and a terrible head-cold, but between Mattie and Jean he's all set for all the nursing he could need. If Jean always takes the latest shift of sitting by his bed, when the nightmares come at night, well, that's something that Mattie doesn't need to know either. The fact that the door always stays open is Jean and Lucien's secret.

It wasn't so long ago in the distant past that Jean Beazley was Mrs. Christopher Beazley, the wife of a farmer and accustomed to dealing with the demands of a farm and livestock. She remembered all too clearly the way you settle distressed horses and calm jumpy dogs. Children and husbands are easy enough after that, even rattled, they still speak a language she understood. You talk quietly, calmly, with a certain sensitivity and gentleness. You learn to get past it, that way. Lucien Blake is not much different.

So, they practiced, in the laundry, in the linen closet, in the pantry. He can barely stand it, at first, but life has taught Jean that having another person there will help, and it does.

Mattie, of course, thinks it's just the latest in a long line of Blakeian eccentricity and Jean doesn't disabuse her of the notion. Jean was taught that some things are meant to be kept private, and this is certainly one of them.

One afternoon, when they are sitting next to each other in the linen closet, door halfway open, Jean springs.

"Why," Jean said, in implacable manner of woman scorned everywhere, "did you not eat my soup that lunchtime?" She felt more than saw him cross his arms next to her. She knew instinctively, that he will try to play dumb. "After the Hopkins case." He exhaled, heavily. There's silence for a minute, two, then he murmured, lowly,

"What would you serve, Jean, when there are many mouths to feed and there isn't much to go around?"

Her mouth formed the word 'soup,' but she can't quite manage to get it out. That prickling in her eyes is not tears, she told herself firmly.

"I never meant to insult your cooking, Jean. Never yours." Is that close to a sob in his voice, Jean wondered, or has his voice deepened by accident?

"The first years after—" Jean doesn't need to ask after what. There is only one Before and After, and it is a pain that Lucien and she both know too well. "Well, I didn't manage much, but there was _always_ —always soup." She can feel his shoulders shaking next to her, but she doesn't say anything, what can she say? He has said what he can, and she will do what she can.

So, in the darkness of the linen closet, she laid out her hand on top of his and squeezed gently.

"Thank you."

Ask anyone who has ever come to or stayed at Dr. Blake's house, and they will tell you that Mrs. Jean Beazley is a particularly gifted cook, whatever her other attributes as a housekeeper. She had learned her craft at her grandmother's knee, and her shortbread biscuits are particularly prized.

There was rationing, of course, in Ballarat during the war, clothing, tea, sugar, meat, but Jean has never yet hit the level of desperation which means constant gnawing and aching hunger, the kind of desperation which is starvation. Corners were tight, particularly after Christopher had died, but she has never, not in her life, had to face the dwindling terror of having nothing to eat.

But Lucien has.

He let out his secrets, his pain, every once in a while in little comments. Jean doesn't think she could bear any more than the few sentences he admits.

"Much better than snake, Jean, thank you." After a quickly thrown together sandwich in the middle of a case, thrown over his shoulder as he breezed through the door. Or, when Mattie tries to surprise them with dinner, and Lucien's only response to her raised eyebrow when Mattie's back is turned is a:

"Well, rat was worse." And then he sits there calmly and with seeming enjoyment eating some terribly overdone meat and veg, with burnt and watery gravy.

He can never quite come out and tell her, letting it slide out of him in little asides or dark jokes, unexpected, not to be noticed. But Jean learns, day after day, that his mood can be gauged by the way he eats. He never leaves food on his plate, but how long it takes and how reluctant he seems to eat shows how much strain there is under that calm demeanor and courtly manners.

She doesn't realize, at first, what he really means. When she does realize, she suspects that she will never truly learn what he really means.

Little Anne Wilkins is how Jean first learned. She's a very slight, tall girl, almost fifteen, and terribly shy and sweet. Everyone in Ballarat has felt the sharp side of Mrs. Wilkins' tongue, but none more than Anne. She followed after her father into the reception with a dull look and slow pace.

Dr. Blake greeted her with an avuncular smile and an open hand into his surgery, even as Jean ushered Mr. Wilkins aside. He fiddled with the brim of his hat. He's worried, that's obvious. Why? The half an hour examination passes quickly. Jean has taken her sewing in to sit with Mr. Wilkins, who fidgeted badly.

"I'll be back in a minute, Miss Anne." Lucien said, and shut the surgery door primly behind him. He's furious, Jean realized, in that stony sort of way Dr. Blake gets when he's terribly angry.

"Tell me why I shouldn't get Superintendent Lawson on the phone right now, Mr. Wilkins." Lucien threatened, coldly.

"Lucien!" Jean half-rose from her seat. She looked at Mr. Wilkins, still fidgeting, eyes downcast on his lap.

"Look me in the eye, and tell me why any of our children should be malnourished." Lucien uttered softly and walked closer, hands clenching in the fist. He raised his chin and stopped in front of Mr. Wilkins. Mr. Wilkins doesn't say anything, just lifted his eyes with a defeated sort of look. "Anne isn't doing it to herself, Mr. Wilkins. No one in their right mind wants to be starved."

"Her mother," Mr. Wilkins breathed, clearly distressed, "thinks punishing her will stop her making up stories."

"Those stories," Lucien growls, "are because some of the hooligans at school are harassing her. You're her father—you ought to be listening to her and protecting her from the asinine boys propositioning her in the schoolyard—not punishing her." Jean just sits there, half-startled, half-furious, half-glad that Dr. Blake is, once again, doing what he can. She hasn't seen him this menacing since a lynch mob had shoved her to the ground.

"Furthermore." Lucien said quietly, with a grim smile as he lowered his voice, "no one deserves to be starved as a punishment. I won't stand for it, Mr. Wilkins." Even though he doesn't move a muscle, Jean shivered at the menacing edge in his voice. Here is that brittleness in Lucien Blake again. All at once, she realized her mistake that all this time, she had thought that it was just a side effect of the war that Lucien was once starving.

But on purpose? Her mind blanked. Long empty minutes passed.

"I'll come talk to Mrs. Wilkins, if you think it will help, Mr. Wilkins." Dr. Blake offered, opening the door to the surgery. "Yes, Miss Anne, I'm so sorry that took so long. Biscuit to take as you go? Jean, would you please? Thank you."

They leave, and Jean and Lucien sit in the kitchen silently, by the ready teapot.

"Deliberately?" She ventured, pouring out another cup for Lucien.

"People are foolish, and stupid, even cruel." He said, moving the handle of his teacup around the saucer. He doesn't look at her.

"Are they?" Jean said carefully, looking at his profile from the side of her vision.

"Sometimes. If they can." Lucien said, and raised his teacup. He doesn't say anything else, not for a long while. Neither does Jean. Some things have to be said in silence.

Jean doesn't ever bring the topic up again, but if she has started to keep a ready little packet of shortbread biscuits slipped into his pockets, she doesn't mention it, and Lucien only says, with an almost shy smile,

"Thank you, Jean."


	3. What Is It But Nightfall?

Title: Too Long A Sacrifice

Characters: Lucien Blake, Jean Beazley, Charlie Davis, Matthew Lawson, Mattie O'Brien, OC

Rating: T

Wordcount: 2607 (7190)  
Warnings/Spoilers: S4 spoilers, and DBM speculation (particularly house/room layout).  
Summary: _Sometimes, Lucien Blake thought he had never left that pit in the Ban Pong POW camp; other times, he looked at Jean and knew better._

A/N: Anyway, one of the things that's somewhat noticeable, after a fashion in DBM, is how many times Lucien should be (1) attacked by the people's he's just threatened or insulted (2) how many times he is attacked over the course of the show and he pops up, perfectly alright (spanner to the ribs; attempted crushing/strangulation by car; hit in the head and lost consciousness; or in the rowing episode in S3 when that kid punched him in the head repeatedly? and those are just the more egregious ones).

So, I had a bit of problem struggling with this chapter. Originally, the plan was to have a three chapter story on claustrophobia, but Jean got in and then wouldn't get out. Chapter 2 was on starvation instead, and so we go on. It's a slightly bigger project than I thought it would be. And then, yesterday, I went and re-edited "Stop Hanging On, Baby" (the ballad version with NG&CM) into an actual song. And I still don't understand why CM insists on singing in his upper range for everything when the lower part of his baritone is so good.

(This remains unbeta-ed and barely edited. I welcome any and all feedback, so please review. )

* * *

What Is It But Nightfall?

 _What is it but nightfall?_

 _No, no, not night but death;_

 _Was it needless death after all?_

 _…W.B. Yeat, "Easter, 1916"_

It isn't the last time they hear from Miss Anne Wilkins. What follows is an eight week crusade on Dr. Blake's part. He corners Mr. Wilkins in the bar, catches Mrs. Wilkins out at her shopping and even takes to hanging around the schoolyard at dismissal to make sure Miss Anne is safe and sound. Some people would say he's acting like a lunatic but it is Dr Blake, after all.

His campaign works after a fashion, but he only truly succeeds when he enlists Mr. Simpson, Stevie to those who knew him as a kid, the history teacher, to keep an eye on Miss Anne. With a friendly, authoritative presence at her back, the older boys leave her alone more and more gradually. But it all goes on swimmingly this way for two weeks until everything comes to a head.

It doesn't, surprisingly, come from Mrs. Wilkins though her large handprint has reddened the doctor's cheek more than once. No, it's late on Friday evening that Jean and Lucien hear several cars pull up in the drive. It interrupts Jean's knitting, and Lucien has to put down his paper, for both of them to look at each other in confusion.

"I'll go, Jean." He said, bouncing up from his chair. Doubtless, it will be for the doctor anyway.

Jean heard the door swing open, but not shut. Then she heard the sound of raised voices, and got up quickly. Trouble follows the doctor around, why should she be surprised it comes home with him too?

Lucien has his hands spread wide, conciliatorily, and is looking to make headway on calming the boys down, when Jean stepped out the door. There's a pack of them, as adolescent males tend to do, most somewhere around sixteen or seventeen. She recognized the Dawson boy, and the Edwards boy, and several others besides. They've been drinking.

"What do you think you're doing?" She threatened them, as only a mother of two troublemakers could. "Coming here to Dr. Blake's house, at this hour of the night?" And then she stepped right into the circle next to Dr. Blake, hands on hips, and raised her voice a little. "And drunk!"

Two things happen in that instant: Lucien turned his attention from the boy in front of him to watch Jean instead, whether for protection or admiration she doesn't know, and the tall, heavyset boy on the edge of the circle decided this was a good time to prove his manhood, stepped forward and smashed the beer bottle in his hand against the side of Lucien Blake's head.

Then Jean is falling backwards to the ground, with Dr. Blake partially on top of her. He catches himself on his hands and knees, wet glass tinkling down the side of his head and collar onto Jean lying on the ground below him. In the uncertain light from the house, Jean can just make out the blood trickling down his neck. She's too winded to say anything but watches, with growing dread, as he heaved himself up and got to his feet.

She doesn't doubt, in his usual state, he could flatten every last one of these boys, but he's already hurt, and dizzy, she suspected, as he dodged a punch a little too far sideways and stumbled. One of other boys landed a solid blow in his back, and he turned to face them.

He's not fighting back, she realized. One blow to the back of the knee and another beer bottle landing on his shoulder, drove him to his knees on the driveway. Jean has been too startled to get up, but she does now, crouching by his side in the lull of blows.

"Jean," He mumbled through the blood on his teeth from a split lip. "The telephone. Quickly."

"Do something." She hissed, pleadingly, willing him to defend himself. He won't let them hurt her, but he's also not going to raise a hand in his own defense.

"They're just boys, _cher coeur_." And then he slipped his hands out of hers, and stood up. Crawling on her knees and coming to her feet, she lurched away from the circle around Lucien, and ran for the phone. It will take at least ten minutes for the police to arrive, she knew. If only Danny still lived with them!

She can do nothing but watch as they keep on hitting him, with their fists mostly but sometimes with their feet. He only let out a groan once, when a heavy blow landed square on the right side of his abdomen, down low near the edge of his vest. It's a spot he habitually covers with his hand when he's nervous or uncomfortable, and Jean wondered now if there isn't more of a reason than habit that he should do so.

She has never seen a man being beaten to death before, and she isn't willing to stand idly by and watch it. Shouting only gets lost in the chaos, and when she wades into the circle, she is only pushed out easily enough again. Their blows have settled to a sort of rhythm in any case, having lost the frenzy of before. Lucien is bloodied and battered but upright.

His look isn't the look of bravado, but the look of a man who has had worse, and survived it. Perhaps pain, Jean thought, doesn't register quite the same way anymore to a man like Lucien. The boys have gotten tired and sulky even by the time Constable Davis showed up. Their prey isn't responding the way it should, and they haven't enough drink inspired courage to go on beating Dr. Blake senseless.

The authority represented by Davis' uniform and his shouting soon has half the boys piled into the back of his car. Davis has to commandeer the backseat of the Doctor's car to get them all down to the police station. Jean drives, and Dr. Blake, looking more and more pale, insists on going to the station with them.

* * *

The room is very dark and the door partially shut, and she suspected she is not meant to look at what is happening inside. She knows she shouldn't watch, but all the men seem to have forgotten her, sitting in the benches at the edge of the hallway in the police station office.

All the boys are handcuffed, huddled in their chairs, and Lawson, despite being roused out at this time of night, has put on his full uniform. The disgusted look on his face speaks volumes, the courage of drink has worn off for the boys, and some of the more timid have begun to look frightened. The ringleaders, John and Billy, just look sullen and resentful.

"Disturbing the peace. Under-aged drinking. Trespass. Aggravated assault and battery." By the end of his prowling around the boys, Lawson's voice is raised to a dull bellow that echoes off the station walls and right through the migraine in Jean's skull. "Tell me, Dawson and Edwards, will it be worth going to jail for this moronic stunt? Or were you too busy to stop and think about the consequences of being an idiot?"

"Yessir." Edwards responded, then gulped, "No sir."

"Shut up." Dawson retorted, and then under his breath, "prick."

"No, you shut up, Mr. Dawson." Lawson roared back at him. Even Dawson is beginning to look a little cowed. Lawson lets them stew; it's something he's very good at, even as the doctor has faded out of sight.

"Doc." Charlie's voice is hushed, insistent with the tone of, 'you really shouldn't be doing that.' Unusually, Lucien doesn't say anything back to him. Just the sound of the hands moving over cloth, and then, sleeves sliding off.

When Lucien next walked in front of the door, he's unclothed from the waist up. Already, the bruising is settling into purple and blue shades all over his body. No one ever denied Lucien Blake was a handsome, well-built man but the only thing Jean can feel is sick. There's a particularly lurid black bruise on top of what looks like a large, silvery seam far down on Dr. Blake's right side. It's old and ugly scar tissue in the place that Lucien covers with his right hand. Jean wondered, distantly, if it always pains him.

Dr. Blake limped past the door quickly, patting Lawson on the shoulder on his way by.

"Now," Dr. Blake said, conversationally to the boys, "if you'd hit here, perhaps even just a little harder, this spectacular bruise would also be a ruptured spleen. Hit opposite that, maybe a torn liver." Jean can imagine it; he's strolling around their chairs looking professorial as he points to various injuries on his own body. To the people that inflicted them, no less. "Sometimes fatal, sometimes not."

Someone let out their inhaled breath in a small sound of shock.

"Of course, you've locked onto the rib cage as a good target—which it is—but dangerous too. If the ribs splinter, or break inwards, they puncture a lung. Death is pretty quick after that. Let me tell you, fellows," Dr Blake has lowered his voice, "watching some poor bloke drown in their own blood. Nasty way to die."

Jean is beginning to feel quite cold, and somewhat sick. There isn't a sound in the station, except Blake's heels clicking on the ground and the hushed sound of breathing. Even Lawson and Davis seem spellbound.

"If you really want to kill someone, hitting their spinal cord or snapping their neck is the way to do it. You have to hit hard, or at just—the right—angle." His tone has turned dark. "If not, hitting the kidneys, here and here, is quite painful. Careful, though, hit too hard and you'll have kidney failure on your hands."

Dr. Blake has turned to face them all now, letting his deadpan stare and their own consciences work for him. But now Jean can see his back through the gap in the door. If anything, that's worse. There is a tapestry of faded, silvery scar tissue there too, all over his back. No wonder Lucien insists on wearing an overly proper amount of clothing.

"Lucky for you lot, you aren't very good at being murderers, are you?"

Jean made a small sound, almost like a gasp, and then covered her mouth with her hand. Her palm hurts, and tugging on the scrape from the gravel has shocked her into focus again.

"No, you aren't." The doctor mused, almost in reflection to himself. Jean is not fooled; this is a lesson, being put on for the boys' benefit. Lucien lets the quiet hold for a beat, then two. Then his voice sounded like a hammer on metal, raised almost to shouting, "Neither were the Japanese, but then, they were better at it than you. They had more _practice_."

His breathing sounded ragged in a suddenly small place. Dr. Blake abruptly faltered next to Constable Davis, and as smoothly as if it were intended all along, Superintendent Lawson stood out from the corner of the room.

"We fought a war, so that little toerags like you, Dawson and you, Edwards, and all you lot, wouldn't think that attacking and beating up good men like Dr. Blake was acceptable. Get that through your thick skulls, IT ISN'T." Lawson bellowed in their faces. Jean's head is ringing like a drum, and her hands felt cold. Most of the boys look white and shocked, a few are openly crying.

"Do you know what I see when I look at you, Dawson? A bully, and a coward. The whole lot of you, bullies and cowards! A bully, is that what I should tell your Mum, Dawson? Or a coward to your dad, Edwards? That's what I'll have to tell them, if you lot don't straighten up." Lawson bent down, eyes seeming viciously serpentine against his cheekbones. His voice hushed as if confiding some sinister secret, "And if I hear of one whisper, one trace that you have been anywhere near Miss Anne Wilkins, I will arrest the whole lot of you just for breathing. Do you hear me?"

A whole chorus of "yes sirs" filled the room for a second.

"Constable Davis. Throw them in the cells." Lawson turned back to Blake, as if dismissing them.

Jean never saw Davis bring the boys down to the cells, for all of a sudden, her heart had begun to do a quick step in her chest, and the dim, cold walls of the police station felt very far away.

When she comes to, Lucien has knelt on the ground in front of her, with one wrist in his hand taking her pulse, the other on her shoulder, holding her upright.

"Jean," he said, sounding too tender to be anything but relieved. "There you are, my dear."

"Lucien." Her voice sounded strange, muffled almost. "At least you put your shirt back on."

"Yes, quite." His face looked almost ashamed, as if he had been caught out doing something he shouldn't. It seemed quite sudden, that her hand should be in his and his other hand cradling her neck and jaw. He has large, warm hands, she noticed, good for doctoring and piano playing.

"Thank you for saying so, Jean. But I'm sorry we kept you out like this." Someone sensible has to keep an eye on you, she thought. The doctor chuckled.

"Yes, and you do fit the bill nicely." He said, and stood. She must have spoken out loud then, but the floaty feeling made it hard to tell. In the dim light of hallway, the shadows under his eyes look very dark, and his eyes look very blue. They gleam, almost like stars. She wanted his hands back, but squashed the thought immediately. Even in shock, Jean will not say that out loud.

"Do you think you could stand, Jean?" He asked, looking at her carefully, searchingly.

"Mmm." She nodded, and took his hand. Standing up made her feel even more lightheaded and she drifted into Lucien's chest almost by accident. He put one arm around her shoulders, and she thought for a second she felt his cheek resting on her hair. But that was just her imagination.

"Time to go home, Mrs. Beazley." Lucien said, wearily. "Best I drive."

In fact, it was Constable Davis who wound up driving, for Lucien wouldn't let Jean drive and Lawson wouldn't let Blake drive and that left Davis to do the legwork.

Jean doesn't remember being put to bed, with neatly bandaged hands. She doesn't remember Lucien going to bed either, but he must. The next few days are a blur of headaches and naps, all trying to nursemaid Dr Blake while feeling none too well herself.

There are stitches and bandages, meals in bed and enforced rest, growing frustration and bad tempers, until by Monday Jean takes refuge in the wine cellar to have a quiet cry. It won't help her head stop pounding, or the tight muscles of her neck ease but it will have to be enough.

He'd rankled at her testy, tired,

"Good afternoon," with a growled response, lying back stiffly in the garden chair. She wanted to hit him with the frustration of it, doesn't he see she's doing the best she can? But she's Mrs. Jean Beazley, so she smooths down her apron, turned on her heel, and kneaded a batch of dough into oblivion.

He doesn't show up for dinner. She eats with Mattie.

She shouldn't be surprised when the levels in his liquor cabinet start decreasing rapidly once again, but she is.


	4. Enough to Know

Title: Too Long A Sacrifice

Characters: Lucien Blake, Jean Beazley, Matthew Lawson

Rating: T

Wordcount: 2768 (9958)  
Warnings/Spoilers: S4 spoilers, and DBM speculation (particularly house/room layout).  
Summary: _Sometimes, Lucien Blake thought he had never left that pit in the Ban Pong POW camp; other times, he looked at Jean and knew better._

A/N: You know, in some episodes, I would definitely say LB is an alcoholic, particularly in S1. If he is, of course, he's the functioning type. But on the other hand (and this is a TV show mind), it never seems to affect his work, his pseudo-family, or his ability to function. And of course his drinking tapers off as the seasons continue. The evidence that his hands shake in the hepatitis episode is sort of iffy too, because muscle fatigue and tremors is a symptom of hepatitis (and his PTSD as we know). What I would definitely say is that his drinking is a kind of self-medication for his PTSD symptoms, in an era when barbiturates or benzodiazepines were the proscribed treatment, a treatment often inefficacious and possibly harmful, with frequently nasty side effects.

Challenge: Re-watching S1e9, you have to wonder, would Lucien have gone off drunkenly at the consul if Mattie hadn't argued and criticized him first?

This was a slog and I'm sorry for the delay, folks. This remains unbeta-ed and barely edited. I welcome any and all feedback, so please review.

* * *

Enough to Know

 _For England may keep faith_

 _For all that is done and said._

 _We know their dream; enough_

 _To know they dreamed and are dead;_

 _…W.B. Yeats, "Easter, 1916"_

Dr. Blake and Superintendent Lawson have a spectacular argument on Tuesday. Lawson wants to press charges against all the boys; Blake wants to let them go. Their shouting echoed through the whole house. The law seeks justice, Jean knows, but the man wants mercy. Matthew is worried maintaining the peace in Ballarat, and Lucien is worried about the welfare of the boys.

Blake recites poetry at Lawson, which is always guaranteed to get his blood pressure up and Lawson strides out of the house with a look of anger. Nothing is settled.

Lucien is drunk by noon.

"The quality…." He started declaiming loudly through the doors of his surgery. "Twice blessed, it blesseth him that gives and him that takes."

He has doffed his jacket at some point, and left off using a glass. If anyone could see him now, wandering around in his rolled shirtsleeves with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, his reputation would be permanently ruined. He'd never be able to practice again, not in Ballarat. He hasn't been this drunk in daylight for months, if not years, and Jean had hoped this drinking was a thing of the past.

She should know better by now.

"Lucien." She said firmly. "It's time for lunch."

"Is it, Jean?" Lucien has staggered to the piano, and briefly assumes an exaggerated pianist's posture. "Sounds…lovely." He has troubling wrapping his mouth around the words.

"Are you going to come and eat it? Or should I not bother making up a plate for you?"

"In a minute." He waved the question off, and then turns to peer around the room. Jean thought for one hopeful second that he's looking at her, but that hope faltered when he starts trying to look around her.

"That's what you said yesterday, Lucien." Jean's voice is quiet and disapproving.

"Hmm?" He blinked his eyes, looking up at her and then staggered to his feet, leaning on the piano.

Jean changed her mind; there is no point in getting Dr. Blake to eat anything now, best just to let him sleep it off in his bed. She stepped forward and slings his arm over her shoulders, intending to guide him to his room. In that moment, Blake spied the bottle on the side table, and lurched for it. His bulk carried her along with him, and Jean is half pinned between him and the table.

"Lucien!" Her hissed surprise stopped him, halfway in reaching around her to pick up the bottle. His eyes, their pupils enormously large and black, look down on her in disbelief and confusion, as if seeing for the first time that he's hurting her.

"Oh." There is a world of pain, loneliness, grief, and remorse, all in that one little world. He stumbled off of her, leaving the bottle where it stands. He's gone in the next moment.

Jean stood up. She wiped at the corner of her eyes frantically with the side of her hand. It's just the strain, she thought to herself.

* * *

She told herself it's just the strain the next morning, when the impact has left greenish bruises on her side and hip, and she doesn't bother to call Dr. Blake for breakfast.

He isn't in the house anyway, and she can't rouse her concern enough to go find him.

She tries to go to Confession, but cannot think of anything to say. The words get stuck in her throat.

Over tea that afternoon her mind is made up: she will go to Adelaide. Christopher has been raising the question, as subtly as he knows how, for the last few weeks now, concerned as he is about Ruby, laid up with increasing bedrest in the last few months of her pregnancy. They clearly need her, want her, more than Dr. Blake does.

She is clearing away the tea when a knock on the door surprised her. It is too early for Mattie to be back from her rounds, and there are no patients scheduled, not since Blake's week-end incapacity.

"Good morning." Jean answered the door, putting on her best armor-plated, housewife smile. The man standing there has a tool case in one hand, and he responded back with a

"Good morning. Is this Doctor Blake's residence?"

"Yes, it is. I'm Mrs. Beazley, what can I do for you?"

"I'm Jack Kline." The man took off his hat. "The doctor ordered a lock put in today." Jean covered her confusion with a smile.

"Did he say where?"

"Cabinet in the dining room. He said you would know where." Jean fought her astonishment. There was only one cabinet in the dining room that could have a lock put in, and it was the liquor sideboard.

"Yes, well, I'll show you to it. Just this way, please." She said, smiling wider and gesturing Kline in. She's watching when Kline is settling his tools on a canvas drop cloth under the sideboard. She approved of his cleanliness, no point in making more mess for her to clean up. By the time he has neatly removed the liquor from the cabinet and put in organized rows on the floor, Jean is confident enough that he will do his job neatly and professionally that she abandons the dining room. She has some prowling to do.

There are dirty clothes in the basket, and a tie is missing where there was no gap before. Clearly, the doctor has snuck back in his house at some point to shave and get a fresh change of clothes. It's good, of course, that's he sobered up, but it just leaves Jean more confused, more torn.

She stood still for a moment in the doctor's room, and trailed one hand over the tight, hospital corners of the spread. Whimsically, she thought, if only I had a shilling to bounce off of them, to see how tight his corners really are! It was the army that had taught him how to make a bed, and some habits become so die cast, they are impossible to change.

Kline's installation doesn't take long, and within an hour, he's packing up his canvas and tool case again, putting the bottles back, and standing up with the satisfaction of a job well done.

"Here's the key, Mrs. Beazley. The doc said you would know what to do with it."

Did she?

"Thank you, Mr. Kline. I'll be sure to let the doctor know. Would you care for a cup of tea and a biscuit before you go? I have some lovely shortbreads just out of the oven."

"Thank you, Mrs. Beazley, but just the one please.I've other jobs this afternoon." Kline agreed, coming after her into the kitchen.

She handed him a cup, cream, one sugar, and two bricks of shortbread. The small, decorated brass key felt heavy and hot in her pocket, as she stood in the kitchen, almost impatiently.

"I'm so relieved," she started, "ever since those boys from the school came around drunk, I've been so worried about that sideboard in the dining room! Why, it might have been worse if they had charged in the house." Jean took a breath, and continued, "You heard about that in town, I suppose?

"It's all over the town, now, Mrs. Beazley. My two aren't of an age to worry about yet, but I probably will anyway. It makes good sense to have it locked up, but a shame, I think." Kline acknowledged, stirred his tea once, and drank half of it. "It wasn't like this before the war. People knew how to behave."

Jean nodded, absently, impatiently. They finished the tea in silence.

"Well, I must be going. Thank you again for the tea." He was as good as his word, having devoured the shortbread and drunk the tea; he left his saucer and cup on the table and promptly left.

Jean saw him to the front door, locked it, and then collapsed as though her strings were cut on the nearest chair in the doctor's surgery. The uncertainty within her was not bubbling up and floating away, but sitting, deep and heavy on her spirit. Her hand clutched at the key in the pocket of her skirt.

It was a matter of habit, she supposed, to put the most charitable interpretation on why, precisely, the doctor was having a lock put in on his liquor sideboard. There were already enough rumors about him and alcohol, in part due to the debacle with the British consul.

It shouldn't bother her that she has to do it, but it did.

* * *

Lucien Blake has never slunk into anything. He's a bad thief, a terrible liar and would sooner hurt himself than cheat anyone.

That evening then, when Jean is waiting, key clutched in hand, he walked into the parlor, upright, as if to face the judge and his last hope of parole before the firing squad.

She has just gone to the kitchen to do one last round over the kitchen for the night before she tucks into bed when she heard the telltale scrape of wooden edge over carpet that indicated the door is being slowly and carefully shut. The only lights on are in the low ones in the parlor, he will go there to find her, she knew.

Jean sailed into the parlor in her pink bathrobe, with the dignity of a queen. Lucien is perched gingerly on the piano bench, and rose immediately upon seeing her. Neither said anything.

Jean sat on the sofa, watching him. She will not flee from the parlor, which is her place more than it is his. Let him pay court to her in this.

The lines between their relationships, employer, employee, friends, are strange. She has lived in this house more and more recently than he has, yet it is his house as it was his father's before him. She might even have known his father better than he did. But now, this is his house, his father, his practice, his life. He can turn her out of it in an instant, if he chooses.

Even though it is her life, as well.

He looked at her, somberly, opened his mouth and shut it again. He smoothed his hair with one hand, and then let his hands fall by his sides. The lines in his face look more pronounced with lack of sleep and strain. His hands flutter next to his pockets. Lucien doesn't seem to notice.

"Jean, please know that I will be happy to give you the most impeccable references, and however much of a bonus you think fit. I can understand you wouldn't want to stay here or to see me, after what happened last night." Lucien said it all very quickly, in one breath, as though he has to struggle with himself to get it out, and would have it done as soon as possible. His face is a settled mask of indifference, but his eyes though, give the game away, for they look like the pleading eyes of a kicked dog.

"Are you asking me to leave?" Her voice is not as firm as she would like. At the finality of this, the look on his face became shocked, as though he were just like a little school boy, offering a solution to a problem before he thinks the consequences through.

"This is my home, Lucien." Jean almost wished she could take that back, for Lucien's jaw twitched a little under his beard, as if she had slapped him rather than revealing an obvious truth.

"I'm so sorry, Jean." Lucien managed, not quite looking at her. That Jean can believe about Blake, he is always sorry. Here at least his actions are in line with his words, for the addition of a lock to the liquor cabinet argued for a repentant man, not one who thinks his housekeeper needs to be released from him.

"Just tell me," her voice soft and unthreatening as possible, "why, Lucien?"

"It helps, you know." He is looking at his hands as he says this, the wallpaper, the carpet, anything but to look at her. "I learned young that it…muted the noise. After, well, it was the only thing that seemed to help." How young, her heart panged to ask, but seeing the little shivers in the tenseness of his shoulders, Jean stilled.

"Wasn't there anyone that could help you, Lucien?"

"Time helped." He said, not answering her question.

Jean looked at him, really saw Lucien in that moment, in the bowed head and rigidly pomaded blonde hair, the grief-stricken little boy sent off to boarding school, the young men who'd run away to Britain and never come back, and the man, the selfish, proud, gentle, terribly wounded man who had washed up on her doorstep.

No, she wanted to say, it didn't. It made it worse. Clean wounds heal, but all time does to fouled wounds is fester them.

Jean tightened her bathrobe around herself, and looked over Lucien's shoulder. Her lip would not tremble.

"I thought that too, when Christopher died." She said. "But I was wrong." Lucien made no sound, but Jean could feel him watching her intently. "Time didn't help. Trying to keep the farm didn't help either. Hanging on, when it was time to let go."

She stopped, fiddled with the end of her bathrobe tie, and didn't look up. He would see the tears brimming in her eyes, and she wasn't sure, even with Lucien, she was willing to share them. "Raising the boys helped, and after that," Jean said tightly, "Looking after your father helped." Looking after you has helped, she wanted to say, but couldn't.

"I tried to help," Lucien said, heavily, thickly, "but I failed."

Jean swallowed back the tears in her throat, at the utter pain in Lucien's voice. He's wearing more than four layers of cloth, yet he is more naked, perhaps, in this moment, than the day he was born. The wounds that Mattie sees everyday on her patients could be no more intimate than this moment between them.

"And then, again. And again, and again, and again." His voice has trailed off to a disconsolate sob, and he sat abruptly on the piano bench behind him, as if all the life had gone out of him.

Jean can see the pattern all too clearly, taught young to believe himself at fault, a lesson reinforced in a lifetime's suffering. His mother, the War, his wife and daughter, his father, her, his duties as police surgeon. No mere man could shoulder the weight of the world, and God was as a shadow in Lucien's life.

She stood decisively, and went over to Lucien, the poor man looking as though he might run at any moment.

"Lucien." She said, looking down at him tenderly, and took one of his hands in hers. "You do help me. You help Mattie, and you help Lawson, you even help Charlie." He raised his head, as if disbelieving her. For a moment, she caught his eyes, reflective with the tears in them, "You do what you can."

His fingers were trembling lightly in hers, and he was looking over her shoulder now. She doesn't need to look at his face to know that the tears are sliding silently down his cheeks, and that she has moved him to feel a conviction long atrophied.

"Do you know, Jean" he said lightly, voice shaky, "for you, I could believe it?"

Jean stood, and taking the key out of her pocket, still warm from her robe, and pressed it into his hands. Looking down at the top of his head, she said reverently and quietly, almost as if it were a mystery of the world she was revealing,

"Why, Lucien, you do believe it."

Lucien didn't sleep that night, but he didn't drink either. Sometime, after Jean left to go to bed, he pulled the old horse blanket off the back of the chesterfield, and went out into the back garden. It is very dark under the trees, but he thought that beyond the rise of the hill, and down the valley, the stars are gleaming softly on the lake.

He watched those stars, in his mind. They look clear and bright. Funny, how he felt no desire to go and see them, wanderlust and disillusionment both far away in this ragged hour, lying in the lawn chair, wrapped in his father's blanket.

Did it smell like lavender and cedar still; and was it hope, he wondered, that ached so in his chest?

The only answer was the rising sun.


End file.
